The new documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer (available to stream on HBO Max on May 20) is an intimate and multilayered portrait of the “Queen of Disco.” Summer’s daughter Brooklyn Sudano co-directed the film with Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams. Sudano states at the beginning of the film, “I’m trying to figure out the many pieces of who mom really was. She was complicated and struggled with her fame, her image, and even love.” Summer, who had three daughters from two marriages, died of lung cancer in 2012 at the age of 63.
Love to Love You, Donna Summer, which draws on a generous amount of never-before-seen home video footage, chronicles the highs and lows of the five-time Grammy winner’s remarkable four-decade career. The doc has something for both Summer stans and more casual fans like myself. Needless to say, I learned a lot from this revealing film. Here are five things I gleaned from Love to Love You, Donna Summer:
1) Summer co-wrote most of her biggest hits.
I went into the film well aware of Summer’s impressive vocal chops. She could belt it out like few others. What I didn’t know is that she was a prolific songwriter as well. Summer notched a dozen Top Ten hits from 1976 to 1982, more than any other artist in that period. Eight of those hits, she co-wrote, most with innovative Italian producer Giorgio Moroder and a few with her husband, Bruce Sudano.
Sudano says via voiceover in the film that he and Summer would roll the tape and jam in the studio.
“We would just flow; we would pick up one from the other. We would add harmonies when we’d find a little groove. It was never competitive. It was completely respectful of each other’s gifts. I was always in awe of [Summer’s] mind. Because of her persona as Sex Goddess and First Lady of Love, her artistry as a songwriter got overlooked.”
The commercial peak of Summer’s career came at the end of the ‘70s when she topped the Billboard Hot 100 four times from November ‘78 to November ‘79. The four No. 1’s were: “MacArthur Park” [Check out our list of 10 great versions], “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls” and “No More Tears (Enough is Enough),” a duet with Barbra Streisand.
2) “Love to Love You Baby” became a hit after the extended mix was released.
In an archival interview, Neil Bogart, president of Casablanca Records, tells the story of how Summer began her singing career as a star in Germany. She recorded “Love to Love You Baby” as a three-minute single, and it failed in Europe. Bogart loved it. He released it in America on Casablanca and nothing happened.
A month later, Bogart was playing it at a house party, and someone told him, “Play that again.” As the record finished, people would ask him to play it yet again. Bogart realized the record was too short. He asked the producer for a 20-minute version.
“We came up with a promotional idea to where if we could get some radio stations to play it just at midnight and say, “Tune in for 20 minutes of love.”
The song, which contains 23 orgasmic moans and is technically just under 17 minutes, turned out to be too racy and long for many radio stations. Still, the edited 7-inch version shot to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February ‘76. It was the start of an extraordinary chart run for Summer as the Boston native landed at least one Top 40 hit every year from ‘76 to ‘84.
3) Summer sued Casablanca Records in early 1980.
At the peak of her career, Summer filed a $10 million lawsuit against Casablanca Records, its CEO, Neil Bogart, and Summer’s ex-manager (and Bogart’s wife) Joyce Bogart. The suit alleged that the agreements between Summer and the label were “the result of undue influence, misrepresentation and fraud.”
Summer did not mince words when speaking about how the music industry exploits artists.
“The record business is really like being raped and abused over and over again. Because that element of your sensitivity is beaten up on and stepped on.”
“I wasn’t justly compensated for what I had done. I had sold millions of records and had not been paid for them at that point.”
Summer and Casablanca ended up settling, and she went on to become the first artist signed to Geffen Records. That long-term deal guaranteed her $1.5 million advances for each album. To complete her contract with Casablanca, Summer recorded one more LP for subsidiary Mercury in 1983, She Works Hard For The Money, which was a smash hit.
4) “She Works Hard for the Money” was inspired by a ladies’ room attendant.
On the night of the Grammys at Chasen’s restaurant in Los Angeles, Summer saw bathroom attendant Onetta Johnson sitting in the corner sound asleep. Summer thought to herself, “Wow, she works hard for the money.” She kept saying the line over and over in her head. “That’s it! That’s a song.” She went into another room and started writing.
“I can’t believe it,” Johnson says in an archival clip in the film. “It’s like a fairy tale for me.” Johnson was pictured on the back cover of the She Works Hard For The Money album.
Summer’s sister Mary Ellen Bernard says Summer was speaking to the worker, calling it a “women’s empowerment song.” The music video became the first from a Black female artist to get heavy rotation on MTV.
In another archival clip, Arsenio Hall asks Summer what song people most identify her with. Summer says it’s “Hard for the Money” for women and “Love to Love You Baby” for men.
5) Alleged anti-gay remarks derailed her career.
Summer, who was raised in a religious household as one of seven children, returned to her faith and became a born-again Christian in 1979. During a concert in 1983 at the height of the AIDs epidemic, Summers allegedly said, “It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” This angered many in the LGBT community, who were a huge part of Summer’s early disco success, and her career took a hit.
“At some point, it went from this comment to [Summer] supposedly saying that ‘AIDs was God’s punishment for gays,’ and that just was never the case,” Bruce Sudano says in the film.
Summer held a press conference where she said the magazine that quoted her saying that was “completely false.”
“These were people that she loved,” Sudano says. “And for her to be viewed as someone who caused them more pain, it’s something I don’t think she ever got over.”
Love to Love You, Donna Summer, directed by Brooklyn Sudano and Roger Ross Williams, just wrapped screening The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. The 107-minute documentary will be available for streaming on HBO Max beginning May 20.
